I spend most of my spare time working on writing novels and screenplays (still working on my first of each), and designing and writing code for the WorldForge project. For WorldForge, I'm developing COAL(Client Object Aggregation Library) a generic support library for game clients and Anvil, a WorldForge client, formerly written in C/C++ and GNOME, but now in the process of migrating to a more platform-neutral Python implementation. Both projects are in the Worldforge CVS tree.

I work at McCaa Webster, a cute little consulting company here in frosty Minnesota. My former employer, CodeWeavers, recently laid me off due to increasing financial woes caused by a lack of business in the Windows --> Linux porting business. Oh well. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

I'm also the proud author of a book on GNOME development for Addison-Wesley, called Writing GNOME Applications. It went into distribution in September 2000, and did pretty well out of the gate. Unfortunately, sales are dragging quite a bit lately, and GNOME books in general don't seem to be moving very well. However, I did get Addison-Wesley to allow me to relicense four chapters of the book under the GFDL license. I put them up at the GNOME developers' web site, and should probably get them up on OpenBooks as well.

When I had spare time, I used to play guitar and bass in local bands and write sci-fi/fantasy stuff. Don't do much of either lately, but I hope to get back into that creative hoo-hah someday soon. For now, I'm perfectly content to spend the time with my family and dogs.

Projects

Recent blog entries by jsheets

Starting to get back into writing again, only this time I'm focusing more on the creative genres.
The book did alright the first quarter,
but apparently has not been selling as well as any of us had hoped. My editor lamented the fact
that none of the GNOME books seem to be doing very well.

As far as I'm concerned, that's a sign to look for greener fields. I may eventually team up with a buddy
from WorldForge to write a graphics book, but that's
in the longer future. For now, I'd like to return to my original writing interests and pursue sci-fi/fantasy
writing. In particular I'd like to finish my first screenplay and get started on my long-overdue first novel.
I have a good starting base for both, but just need to devote the time to finish it.

Stay tuned for more info on my new related MetaDoc project, which I'll likely host on the
OpenBooks web site....

InformIT just kicked
off a two-week
Featured Expert series on me, featuring the book.
Part of the
media blitz. They'll be running six small articles
the first week, and I'll answer questions during the
second week. It does require a free registration *cough*

Also, I finished the first pass at converting the book
into DocBook for publishing on the Web. Just waiting
final approval from Addison-Wesley before I can officially
put it
online.

And finally, we ship out tomorrow for our long-awaited
cruise to Mexico and back.
We'll stop briefly in election-fickle Florida. Just in
time to miss the first major cold spell in frosty
Minnesota!

Woo hoo! The book came out this weekend. We threw a nice
little release party with some neighbors and CodeWeavers
co-workers. The bindery finished ka-chunking them
together at midnight Friday, and AWL saw to it that my
complimentary copies made it in time for the party (thanks
guys!).

Hmmm, still waiting for that Pearson's open license to
finalize so I can put the book up on the
OpenBooks Web
site....